The wonderful Monkey island series has a nice way of talking to characters. You are presented with a couple of choices, and based on your answer (by clicking on one of them) other choices comes up. I'm sure you've all seen it. I'm thinking about the general structure behind such a speech engine. What would be a good way to design it? It's quite dynamic, since just a few choices (in the next set of questions) can change depending on your answer. Also, if you finish the talking in a certain way, something other than just "stop talking" will happen.

The wonderful Monkey island series has a nice way of talking to characters. You are presented with a couple of choices, and based on your answer (by clicking on one of them) other choices comes up. I'm sure you've all seen it. I'm thinking about the general structure behind such a speech engine. What would be a good way to design it? It's quite dynamic, since just a few choices (in the next set of questions) can change depending on your answer. Also, if you finish the talking in a certain way, something other than just "stop talking" will happen.

Please share your thoughts!

I think just hearing "Monkey Island" conjures up bad memories of drifters from their newsgroup who invaded another community's newsgroup. (Unlike the DBZers here, not one of them was decent; they were all pretty persistent, nasty trolls who wouldn't go away.) One in particular needed to be bludgeoned with something, though the whole lot was anvilworthy.

You know, I've been working on something just like this (in fact I sent an early draft of the code to Deadron a week or two ago). I'll spend some time improving it tonight, and then I'll email it to you.

You know, I've been working on something just like this (in fact I sent an early draft of the code to Deadron a week or two ago). I'll spend some time improving it tonight, and then I'll email it to you.

Combining this with client objects would be interesting...putting the lines of text at the top of the screen and making them clickable.

You know, I've been working on something just like this (in fact I sent an early draft of the code to Deadron a week or two ago). I'll spend some time improving it tonight, and then I'll email it to you.